The use of foreign curses that, in their country of origin, would be considered much more offensive to use on television or outright censored. Sometimes the pronunciation is deliberately mangled to obscure it even more. On American television, Spanish swears (especially cojones) are popular.

Since her voice actress speaks German with some degree of fluency, Asuka's dialogue in the original TV and movie dubs of is periodically peppered with German swearing.

In the Manga (Japanese and English), "Scheiße!" is literally the first word out of her mouth. Second if you count a filler exclamation sound as a word.

The eight episode's Japanese voice track has the antagonistic UN admiral saying a clearly audible English "shit" to his second-in-command before continuing in Japanese. It's present on the German subtitles as well.

Zatch Bell!: Ensemble Dark Horse Victoream regularly uses the phrase "Very shit" on a show generally targeted at a younger age group. Generally translated for American audiences as "Very bad".

Genshiken had a whole slur in the anime episode where one of the American otaku compliments ogiue on her Yaoi doujinshi. In the manga the words were blurred out, but in the anime, no censorship was given since the American spoke English, leading a lot of viewers to a very sudden 'when Chihiro spooged all over his glasses it was so hot! And then he started to butt fuck him and-" more or less.

In the Japanese Sonic X episode 2, Sonic literally says "Shit!" when he is detected by security.

As does Mic Sounders the 13th in GaoGaiGar episode 26 while dodging missiles.

Somewhat subverted in Black Lagoon, as Revy, Cluster F-Bomb that she is, drops them regularly (more so when she's upset — the curses appear as onomatopoeiae!), but, unlike the aforementioned Asuka (who is bilingual) she speaks just English.

Oreshura has Fuyuumi's Secret Diary, read aloud for the audience in her voice, in which she curses with "Shit!" several times. She never actually says it out loud, though.

Michiko of Michiko & Hatchin has a foul mouth, but given the setting (a stylized version of Brazil), the dub has her occasionally swear in Brazilian Portuguese (such as calling a stripper a "puta" or "whore").

Lt Surge, an American character, cursed in English in both Pokémon Zensho and the Japanese version of the Pokémon anime. In the anime he shouted "goddamn!"

In the German dub, Perfect Cell lets out a very well-pronounced "OH SHIT!" when about to get hit with Vegeta's Final Flash.

The Danish dub used "shit" a lot, including in the aforementioned scene. Hercule/Mr Satan also says "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" when he thinks Majin Boo is going to kill him.

Comedy

Played With in one sketch by German comedian Didi Hallervorden. Context: A prisoner gets a visit by his wife (or girlfriend), but all the time they have Didi as a kind of chaperone who will honk a horn and take away points whenever they get too lovey-dovey and/or obscene. This gets pretty ridiculous, and the prisoner protests. Then...

Didi: What's your name anyway?

Prisoner: Slotchkovsky!

(Didi honks twice and takes four points)

Prisoner: What was that for now?!

Didi: Do you think I don't understand Polish?!

Comicbooks

During the early run of New Mutants, Sunspot got away with swearing by doing it in Portuguese.

This continued in the original run of X-Force, both for Sunspot (in Portuguese) and his teammate Rictor (in Spanish).

Colossus from the X-Men would sometimes swear in Russian in his early appearances. The word would even be written in Cyrillic characters to obscure it further.

Although he usually used "chyort vozmee...!", which just means "the devil take ...!" Similarly Nightcrawler would sometimes shout "zum Teufel!" (to the devil), usually with hilarious misspellings.

Victor of Runaways once used the Spanish curse word cabrón and when he was turned to speaking binary, the first thing he said was WTF?

In Maus, at one point, Art and his father Vladek are speaking in Polish with English subtitles. Art's father swears, and the Polish contains the actual word (choleranote means what you think it does, but in this context better translates as "dammit!") but the English subtitle simply says "@#%$!"

There's one issue of The Simpsons comic where Homer starts swearing while trying to repaint a room and gets wrapped in wallpaper. His kids notice that he's running out of curses, and throw him a Chinese phrase guide, and he starts cursing in Chinese characters.

Played with in Astérix: the Speech Bubbles never show anything dirtier than Symbol Swearing, but footnotes explain which ancient language this is supposed to represent (though there is at least one instance of "owl swear words").

Fan Works

The CSI: NY fic "Wrong Place,Wrong Time" has Mac overhearing Stella swearing in Greek after she was slightly injured and the hospital wanted to keep her overnight for observation.

A Crown of Stars: Asuka often swears in German when she is pissed off. For example, after an argument with her ex-teammate:

"Gott damn you, you snotty fucking blue-haired prig!"

Advice and Trust: Asuka tends to spout German swearwords when she gets excited or angry. In chapter 6, she was unfairly detained and put in solitary confinement. Asuka expressed her displeasure about that punishment very, very loudly:

Chapter two has Ensign Kate McMillan's fiance, who's from Quebec, drop a "Merde" when his supervisor interrupts their video call to demand he get back to work.

When the listening post spots the Bird-of-Prey IKS Hegh’QeDp after it destroys the shuttle, Crewman Sherazi's remark is "Kiopek oghlu", Azerbaijani for "son of a bitch".

The Discworld fics by A.A. Pessimal do this. A lot. Characters from Rimlands Howondaland use voetsaak!, among other things, when grievously provoked. Zlobenians use Govno! almost for punctuation. Quirmians resort to Merde alors! when feeling a need. And so it goes... the author appears to take a delightfully scatalogical glee in getting round Fan Fic.net's restriction on profanity by putting most of it in foreign.

Irishman Chet Kelly uses a string of what his colleagues realize are Gaelic swears in the Emergency! fic "O is for Outdoors" when he finds out his temporary replacement at Station 51 was a lot more of a dirtbag than he first realize. Chet says he learned the words from his immigrant grandmother.

A Good Compromise features swears in Ukrainian ("povna sraka radoshchiv", literally meaning "ass full of joy" and equivalent to "clusterfuck") and Spanish (the all-purpose insult "pendejo", as well as "Que puta tu madre!"note Your mother's such a whore!).

Jones from Twelve Red Lines being a Canadian, often utters sacre when she gets stressed. Her favourite swears are Merde, Tabarnak and Osti d'épais de marde.

Film

In an old 1950's war film, The Thousand Bomber Raid, an American actor playing a British pilot called a friend "toss-pot". While the word's original meaning was 'drunken idiot' and might still have been used in that sense in the 1940's, in modern times it is more often employed as a variation of 'tosser', so it was probably an 'under the radar' word for the scriptwriter.

In The Matrix Reloaded, The Merovingian likes to swear in French, claiming "It's like wiping your ass with silk." His above quote translates to something like Holy damned bullshity fucking motherfucking shitting son of a bitch, or something like that. It is literally "name of God of the whore of the whorehouse of shit of sluttery of an idiot of (someone receiving anal) of your mother". French allows you to just tack on curse word after curse word with no real grammar involved. French Canadians have a sort of swearing dialect called "sacre" where they combine profanities with terms from Catholic liturgy to create whole paragraphs' worth of nothing but cuss words.

Young Frankenstein. "He would have an enormous schwanzstucker!" Schwanzstueck, though nonexistent, literally means "tail piece" in German. However, Schwanz is also used as a slang term meaning "penis."

Every french Canadian remembers Justin Timberlake's HORRIBLE attempt to say Tabarnak in The Love Guru

In the Get Smart film, the Russian farmer who went to check on who crashed into his barn was swearing pretty profusely. In fact, most of the Russian phrases were ad-libbed by the actors. On the other hand, the farmer couple who sees Max and 99 in a Ferrari do not say "holy shit", as the subtitles suggest but merely blin (literally "pancake"; as a cuss word, close to "darn"), which is pretty mild.

In JFK, during the scene when Willie O'Keefe recalls the night David Ferrie explained the plan to assassinate Kennedy after a party, one of the exiled Cubans calls Khrushchev hijo de la gran puta (son of the Great Whore). Arguably, the worst insult one can say in Spanish. Yet, some official hearing impaired subtitles tone it down translating it as "bastard".

Tuco shouts two similar Spanish curses in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. First, when being carried tied-up into town, he shouts out "¡Hijo de puta te que parió!" ("Son of the bitch who whelped you!", though grammatically incorrect). Then, when Blondie abandons Tuco in the desert, Tuco yells the big one: "¡Hijo de una gran puta!" ("You son of a big whore!").

Subverted in the 1948 film I Remember Mama. Little cousin Arne, the son of Aunt Sigrid, is in the hospital after surgery for a fractured kneecap. When Uncle Chris comes in to visit, he teaches Arne what he says is a Norwegian swear word: "dumme gjet." (His explanation is that the swearing helps ease the pain. Off the back of some recent research, that's Truth in Television.) When a shocked nurse upbraids him for teaching a kid to swear, he informs her that "dumme gjet" actually means "stupid old goat."

In Bunraku, Yoshi says the Japanese equivalent of 'shit' when he realizes he's surrounded in the bar. Unlike the rest of the Japanese in the movie, it's not subtitled.

In the Bedazzled remake, Brendan Fraser's character's first wish is to be powerful and married to his Love Interest. The Devil, being a Literal Genie makes him a Colombian drug lord. Besides suddenly speaking in Spanish, he also finds out that his character speaks Russian when dealing with some Russian dealers. When he figures that out, he curses in Russian.

The Bobo — Peter Sellers' wandering musician character, looking for his big break, plays a song to an unenthusiastic theater owner, who critiques him with "As they say in France — merde."

The Swedish film Fucking Åmål (aka Show Me Love) has (obviously) an English cussword in its title.

Literature

A minor (but suitably irritating) character in Joseph Heller's Catch-22 is named Scheisskopf (his wife being the lovely Mrs Scheisskopf). At several points later in the book, the name is translated directly back to "Shithead" (although a word meaning literal shithead does not exist in German).

It used to be common for translators of bawdy works in Latin or other romance languages to leave steamier passages in the original language, so that they could only be read by "gentlemen".

Older Than Radio: Stephen Jay Gould reported that the only reason his father mentioned to study Latin was to translate the passages in Kraft-Ebbing's Psychopathia Sexualis (1886).

A bit later, the Loeb edition of Suetonius's Twelve Caesars had a page or two of his biography of Tiberius left untranslated. They were the pages about his rumoured debauchery on the island of Capri. Might have been corrected in later printings since newer translations generally include the passage.

Liddell and Scott's Liddell and Scott Greek-English Lexicon (first published 1819, still the standard dictionary for Classical Greek) frequently gives sexual meanings in Latin. One of the great joys of taking Latin is to read literary masters call their critics or rivals, "donkey brained shitheads".

There's a book about Japanese street slang, insults, etc. with the title "Zakennayo"—while you might hear it on TV sometimes, it's not something you'd display prominently in a bookstore. (Translations range from "Don't screw with me!" to "Fuck off!")

The literal translation is just "Don't joke with me", as it's simply a contraction of the phrase "Fuzakeruna yo!". While this grammar usage is indeed really rude ("-na" suffix' dictionary definition 'IS'' "suffix for rude verb negation"), it's not strictly swearing. But in Japanese the more you maim the word in pronunciation, the ruder it gets, so the correct translation of the title would be indeed "Don't fuck with me". Yes, it's that kind of language.

Dave Barry's column "Europe on Five Vowels a Day" gives three "idiomatic expressions" commonly used by foreigners, with translations. "Ach du lieber!" and "Caramba!" are both translated as "Darn it!", which in the first instance is actually a subversion (the phrase is innocuous translating as "Oh you dear", and would really require a masculine noun at the end to be complete). The French phrase "Zut alors!", however, is translated as, "Look! A lors!"

Vivian Vande Velde's Companions of the Night has its leading man muttering "merde" several times under his breath. Several times all in a row.

Ernest Hemingway made extensive use of this in For Whom the Bell Tolls. The Spanish-speaking characters have their dialogue written in awkwardly literal English, but expletives appear as "muck" and "befoul" and even "obscenity" ("Go and obscenity thyself"). However, when the Spanish is left untranslated, it's "mierda" (shit — noun), "cagar" (shit — verb, as in "take a shit") and "joder" (fuck — both the verb and the interjection) all the way.

A particular favorite is along the lines of "Me cago en la leche de tu puta madre": "I shit in the milk of your whore of a mother". Pretty forceful — although the snowclones leave something to be desired. ("I shit in the milk of their airplanes!")

"Sacrebleu" is a double subversion; literally it translates to "sacred blue" (which sounds harmless), but it referred either to the Virgin Mary (who is traditionally depicted wearing a blue dress) or God ("bleu" replacing the similar-sounding "Dieu", not unlike the way "by God" is replaced by "begad" or "by gum" in English). There's a whole lot of stiff-upper-lip context associated with it, making it a serious curse in France until about the end of the 18th century, but everywhere else just sort of a joke.

The Dark Elf Trilogy: Done in-universe by Drizzt Do'Urden, when he taunts some stone giants by saying "Mangura bok woklok" which is "Stupid blockhead" in stone-giant language.

Played with in The Ship Who Sang — one character, angry with another, spends a straight ten minutes yelling angrily at him in Russian. After he's left the room, suitably cowed, she admits that what she's really been doing was just reciting one of her grandmother's recipes... in Russian.

In Terry Pratchett's Discworld, a character from Far Überwald (Discworld's "Slavonic" countries) shrieks Bodrozvachski zhaltziet! at a time of great stress. Terry invented this as a piece of pseudo-Slokian which means nothing in any known Slavonic language, but which conveys all the sulphurous intensity of real Polish or Russian swearing. In fact, the Czech translator of his books left the cod-Slavonic in place, but went so far as to make the character voicing this oath into an explicit Russian, adding the explanatory footnote that cultured Czech readers would instantly know that only one race on this planet swears like that.

In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, turns out Belgium is "is the rudest word in the universe, which is "completely banned in all parts of the Galaxy, except in one part, where they could not possibly know what it means."

In many versions the word used in the scene is simply "fuck", but when this was censored from other versions, the author decided to make it into a joke by switching it to "Belgium" and adding in an explanation for its rudeness.

In The Quantum Thief Mieli swears like a sailor at times, in the author's native tongue, Finnish.

In I Can Get It For You Wholesale by Jerome Weidman, Harry confides to Meyer that "Teddy Ast is a big schvantz." ("Schvantz" is Yiddish for "cock.")

Star Trek: Federation has Jean Luc-Picard remark, "Sacre merde,"* "Holy shit." upon finding out that the chunk of Borg ship they just acquired from the Romulans has an artifact of the Preservers inside it.

The Dresden Files: Storm Front has a bit in Bob the Skull's introductory scene where Bob grumbles something in Old French, "though I got lost when he got to the anatomical improbabilities of bullfrogs."

Zoe Durant, born in Montreal, occasionally busts out a torrieu in the Ahriman Trilogy.

In The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, the banditos tell the protagonists: "Badges, to god-damned hell with badges! We have no badges. In fact, we don't need badges. I don't have to show you any stinking badges, you god-damned cabrón (bastard) and ching' tu madre (fuck your mother)! Come out there from that shit-hole of yours. I have to speak to you." (Most of this was famously reused in the film version, but not the cussing in either language.)

Firefly has extensive (and generally mispronounced) swearing in Mandarin. One wonders if the surreal effect this must have on native speakers of Mandarin is responsible for the show being completely unheard of there. Whoever wrote the DVD subtitles didn't even recognize it as Mandarin: anything more than a few words is rendered as [SPEAKS GALACTIC LANGUAGE].

The novelization for the film actually translates the swears in footnotes.

Giles often uses obscure British slang terms, whose true meanings few Americans would know, but which generally sound like insults in context. Some of these have highly vulgar origins; for instance, Giles uses "berk" as an insult, which comes from the Cockney rhyming slang "Berkshire Hunt".

Spike often used less-than-polite British slang, including the memorable "We band of buggered" (parodying the St. Crispin's Day speech "we band of brothers") as well as frequent "bloody"s and "sod off"s. A shot of him giving the two-fingered British "up yours" gesture in one episode actually ended up as part of the Title Montage in later seasons.

Desi Arnaz, on I Love Lucy, using the Spanish equivalent of "pregnant" when the English word was unacceptable for broadcast.

Captain Picard of Star Trek: The Next Generation has let slip a "merde" at least twice, in "The Last Outpost" and "Elementary, Dear Data." note A literal case of Getting Crap Past the Radar. He also swore up a storm in Klingon in one episode. Even the visiting Klingon passenger was impressed (swearing being something of a respected art-form among Klingons).

Riker once swore in Romulan in response to a Romulan defector trying to get a rise out of Worf with Klingon insults.

In the Leverage episode "The Two Live Crew Job" the Israeli muscle for the opposing team throws out a quick "Kus shel ha ima shelha" at the team leader. Generally used as a "Fuck you" equivalent in Israel, the literal translation is "Your mothers cunt".

Also, in the pilot, Sophie calls Nate a "wanker" when he shoots her back after she shot him while he was trying to arrest her.

In the pilot episode of Lost, Sawyer (a Southern redneck) accuses Sayid (an Iraqi) of having caused the plane to crash. During the ensuing fight and argument, Sayid calls Sawyer "Ibn al-Kalb", which is Arabic for son of a bitch.

One episode of Stargate SG-1 features a very surprised Russian soldier saying "Bozhe moi," which is (inaccurately) translated by the DVD closed captioning— not the subtitles— as "Holy shit." SG-1 is notable for being a show that wasn't afraid to take advantage of its cable heritage and let a "shit" hit the fans now and again.

For reference, the actual translation is "My God." Same basic exclamation as in English.

In Stargate Atlantis, Dr. Radek Zelenka is played by David Nykl, a Czech Canadian who speaks fluent Czech. (The character was originally supposed to be Russian, but when Nykl auditioned and told the creators he could speak Czech, they quickly changed the character's background to match the actor's, more or less.) Word of God says only about half of Zelenka's Czech lines are scripted, and Czech fans have confirmed that not only is there a lot of uncensored swearing, he sometimes breaks the fourth wall.

Late Night with David Letterman did a bit where a woman shouted out obscenities in Finnish. On stage. Uncensored. In reality, however, none of what she said was actually obscene, but relatively mild insults delivered in a tone that suggested very offensive content. Apparently they would have still had to bleep the bad words out had there been any, so they settled for what they could get away with.

In the Japanese seriesCutey Honey The Live, the character Duke Watari is noticeably fond of screaming out "SHIT!" whenever he gets upset about something.

Swing Girls has a cute high school girl shouting "Shit!" as she misses her stop on the subway. In subtitled anime, the Japanese word for 'shit' (kuso) is often translated as 'damn' for American audiences because of the similar usage.

It's also her maiden name. In one episode she meets an old classmate or similar, who even goes so far as to greet her as "Peggy Wanker, no need to thank her".

In the last episode of the first season of Heroes (and then again in the first episode of the second season), Hiro says something in Japanese that is subtitled only as "&%#* ".

Subverted in Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide — in "Guide to-Bad Habits", Moze tries trash-talking he volleyball opponents in Dutch (but not really) to avoid getting penalized for foul language. The referee turns out to be Dutch (wearing wooden shoes in a school gym!) and penalizes her anyway.

Air Crash Investigation: In "Pilot vs. Plane", the pilot audibly shouts "Merde!" right before he crashes his plane into a forest.

Botched regularly in Friends, by Joey. He says "Va fa Napoli!" (which roughly means "Go to Naples!", in Italian), when he actually he meant to say "Vai a fare in culo" ("Go do it in the ass", or, less literally "Go get fucked in the ass").

Malcolm in the Middle has Lois' ambiguously foreign co-worker shouting "chaluzmerack!" when the store is held up.

In the Russian medical show Interny ("Interns"), the American intern Phil Richards speaks Russian very well but will occasionally swear in English. Of course, most Russian know what "shit" means but don't consider it to be as offensive as equivalent Russian swears.

Top Gear is fond of letting non-English speakers express themselves. The best example was probably the Top Gear vs. D-Motor challenge, where the Germans were cursing with great passion. English subtitles were provided that made them sound like an English granny in a very mild snit.

In the Covert Affairs episode "Begin the Begin", Annie has to protect an Estonian asset, who, upon getting shot at during a car chase, launches into a string of what are presumably profanities in Estonian, given that Annie responds, "You have some mouth on you."

In the fifth season premiere of Mad Men, Megan, Don's new French Canadian wife drops a rather brilliant "... calisse." Any French Canadian will immediately recognise this as an absolutely perfect Precision F-Strike as well.

An August 1973 telecast of Match Game '73 had the question "Jack's ________ fell asleep at the movies." Bert Convy's response was "arse." Richard Dawson took Convy's response card and tore it up.

Played for Laughs in the Korean drama Faith (aka The Great Doctor). The titular doctor gets angry at an aristocrat and insults in English.note It was F**K you (asterisks pronounced), go to hell. Later, he gets sick, and they think she put a curse on him. It gets so prevalent that her saying "Red Cross" is enough to get three fully armed men to back off.

There's at least one season one CSI: NY episode where Stella was apparently cursing in Greek, although there's no translation given.

In "Old Friends", Michael says something in Czech to a Czech assassin sent to kill him after punching the guy in the throat. The subtitles translate it as "WELCOME TO MIAMI ASS***".

One of the series' minor running gags is the fact that despite being born and raised in Miami, Michael doesn't speak Spanish. Twice in "Enemies Closer" he has to have text messages in Spanish from a dead Latin gangster's phone translated for him, resulting in first Larry, then Fiona telling him, "He called him a pendejo. That's like 'idiot' but ruder."

On My Name Is Earl, Earl persuades Catalina to visit Joy in the Camden County Jail. The two women quickly get to trash-talking each others' appearances. Catalina remarks on the scar on Joy's belly, thinking it's a C-section scar. Joy tells Catalina it's not a C-section scar, it's where her prom date stabbed her which he was paid to do by Liberty, Joy's half-sister and lifelong rival, and that she birthed both of her children naturally. Catalina replies, "Then I guess your gatito is as saggy as your breasts!"

The Wire: The Greeks call Ziggy Sobotka "malaka"—Greek for "wanker." At first he doesn't understand what it means, but he quickly figures it out, and he comes to hate it.

In the Murder, She Wrote episode "A Death in Hong Kong", Emma (France Nuyen) is driving and has a near miss when a bus driver tries to cut in front of her, causing her to exclaim "Puk gai ya!" She says it's an "obscure dialect". It's actually Cantonese for either "shit", or "asshole/bastard."

One episode of Law & Order: SVU has a gang banger say "I'm no maricon" when Stabler insinuates that he was having a same-sex relationship with the Victim of the Week. Maricon is Spanish slang meaning "faggot".

In the Inside No. 9 episode "La Couchette", Jorg drunkenly yells "verpiss dich!" ("fuck off" in German) at Kath and Les when they tell him to get out of Les's assigned bed.

Richie Kavanagh's song "Aon Focal Eile" — a hybrid English-Irish song about a teacher teaching Irish. She said 'Aon focal, dá focal, trúir focal, eile' — and I not knowin' no focal at all. Translated to English means, She said 'One word, two words, three words, another' — and I not knowin no word at all. The humour is from the fact that "Focal" (an Irish word meaning "word") is pronounced "Fuckal". Sing along, children.

Many of Korean rapper PSY's singles are epitome of this. Just listen to his debut single Bird again.

Professional Wrestling

Many televised airings of professional wrestling have the wrestlers get away with stuff in promos simply because it is in a foreign language, such as Homicide in TNA or Bullet Club in New Japan. The former even got this turned into an angle when it turned out Dixie Carter was unaware of the type of language he'd been using. However, the World Wrestling League bleeped out foreign cuss words on their program from the very start, even when not accompanied by subtitles.

Germany based westside Xtreme wrestling likes English cuss words, though the fans are more often offenders than the wrestlers.

Theatre

One memorable example comes from the musical version of The Producers, in the number "You Never Say Good Luck in Opening Night," which features the phrases "Merde" and "Vaffanculo", which are swear words in French and Italian, respectively.

"Vaffanculo" is also used by Rizzo in Grease in the song "Look At Me, I'm Sandra Dee".

In God Hand, Elvis is inherently fond of swearing in Spanish in a regular basis. Most notable in the battle quotes, "Time to play, pendejo!"note asshole "¡No hablo inglés, cabrón!"note I don't speak English, you fucker!

In Resident Evil 4, the Spanish-speaking Ganados use strong language often, and since they are untranslated the ESRB didn't address them for the game's rating in the original Nintendo GameCube version (they did in subsequent ports). In fact, the first words said by the first Ganado Leon meets roughly translate to "What the fuck are you doing here? Get out of here, asshole!"

Funny variation in the first Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Parts of Manella's dialogue is internet slang and leetspeak, and he therefore gets away with exclaiming "WTF!".

Scarface: The World Is Yours has Tony and some of his enemies liberally dish out the Spanish. They have no problems with using English as well, though.

In the Wii Punch-Out!!, various boxers who are walking national stereotypes speak foreign languages. Great Tiger tells Little Mac (in Hindi) to do what translates to suggesting he go back to his mommy's milk, while Bald Bull asks (in Turkish) if Louis (Mac's Trainer) is teaching Mac how to get spanked.

In Team Fortress 2, the Spy has "Oh, merde!" (shit) as one of his angry one-liners. The Medic will also call his enemies "Schweinehunds" (pig-dog; generally equivalent to "bastard" or "mongrel", though the plural form is "Schweinehunde").

Grunty, the German mercenary from Jagged Alliance, often exclaims "Scheisse" (Shit) when he spots an enemy. Another mercenary, Ivan, also swears in Russian. (Then again, in the first two games, he only speaks Russian.)

Final Fantasy XIV of all things seems to love doing this; the Gridanians have been effing and blinding with British expletives. Bollocks, arse, shite... In voice acted scenes, characters are given vaguely to strong British accents as well.

In Soul Calibur II, Yoshimitsu says a few Japanese curse words, which are also used in the original Japanese version... Only when directly translated, however. Due to Japan's lack of common curse words, it's just as take in Japan.

In the 2005 game The Warriors (based, of course, on the 1970s cult classic film), while the New York "tough-guy" characters cuss a blue streak anyway (just as in the movie), there is also some untranslated Spanish when the characters take a side trip to Spanish Harlem, and some of the Puerto Rican expressions would be even more offensive than what is normally heard in the game were they to be rendered in English. Two examples are "Me cago in tus madres" ("I shit on your mothers") and "puto" (used repeatedly, and a very offensive name to call any male, since its connotation is somewhere between "bitch" and "faggot.") Note It literally means male prostitute. That being said, the word's so offensive you'll probably prefer to use synonyms when discussing male prostitution in Spanish (such as 'prostituto' or 'chapero').

Used frequently in the Grand Theft Auto games which feature communities foreign to America: they (mostly Hispanic) swear in their home language (it's easier to hear whenever you cause a traffic accident), but other languages are not exempt (Portuguese-speaking players are guaranteed to get a laugh in IV when they hear a driver — very rare thoughnote The Portuguese community in Liberty City is located in Alderney, which is not unlocked until halfway into the game — yelling "vai tomar no cu, filho da puta!", which means "get fucked in the ass, son of a bitch!").

Interesting case in Tales of the Abyss: Asch often calls Luke "dreck" as a placeholder title and insult. The word is indeed uncommon, but not completely unheard of in North American English and it was likely brought over from the German language where it carries the meaning of "trash" or "inferior goods", hence Asch's usage of the phrase. However, the original Yiddish version of the word, predating the German use, is much stronger and harsher.

In the Japanese release of MOTHER 2, one skater dude in Fourside who offers you items will say "Goddam!" to you in katakana if you refuse to buy. This was predictably, though bizarrely, Bowdlerised in the EarthBound localization to "Mod-boy Jerk!"

Wind Child Black gives us two - Alexia, a gypsy girl, occasionally drops 'nenorocutule' note Romanian for 'unlucky', or 'you poor devil,' but is used culturally as an equivalent to 'motherfucker.'. And then there's Ecchi, an immortal snake woman who speaks what is basically Portuguese, and is INCREDIBLY fond of dropping 'maldito' and 'foda-me' note 'Damned/fucking' and 'fuck me', respectively.

The Dreadful: Erin's final words are "Leck mich."note Short for "Leck mich am Arsch.", literally "Lick me on the ass.", German version of "Kiss my ass."

The Drow of Drowtales use every normal English swear word, from the F's all the way to the B's and C's, but they most frequently use the insulting 'Mother-killer'; their culture places heavy importance on matriarchy, so someone who kills their own mother is seen as the worst kind of person.

This is only one example, as Christine uses these more or less regularly, as does Javert and occasionally Erik. Less flowery things like "Merde" are trademark of the French characters in mother series Roommates too.

In fact, given his normally mute nature and his Cluster F-Bomb when he lost at hockey, it may actually outweigh every other word he's ever said, ever.

TwoKinds: What Flora says when she breaks her foot is apparently "untranslatable".

Appears constantly in Polandball comics. There's not really a censoring board for them, but their use of non-English curses alternates between getting some fairly insensitve terms past the radar and for simple authenticity—it only makes sense to expect Polandball to use Polish vulgarities, Finlandball to use Finnish vulgarities, and so on.

Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg, better known as PewDiePie will sometimes go full on Swedish Tirade (or even his girlfriend's language, Italian) in some of his videos, much more so when he's playing rage games.

Captions: Oh but that fucking laser in hell for the fucking dawn vagina dick...

"Wanker" and "shite", which are considered quite rude in British English, are apparently exotic enough that they can be used without anyone batting an eye.

The German version of the enraged cook's cry against Homer in Guess Who's Coming to Criticize Dinner includes Italian swearing. And not just a random swearing, but one that will get you instantly banned from any show on Italian TV, as actors and local Big Brother contestants found out at their own expenses. Despite it being one of the most common utterances in Real Life Italy.note Hint: The word used was a bestemmia (blasphemy).

A single episode of Daria has the English characternote A personification of Guy Fawkes Day; it's complicated saying "wankers", "tossers", and a few lesser swears. When aired in Britain, the character's scenes were so heavily edited that they made little or no sense.

Oglethorpe, the Austrian-sounding Plutonian alien from Aqua Teen Hunger Force once called someone Scheißkopf, a German word that literally translates to "shithead".

Mas y Menos in the Teen Titans animated series got away with at least one and possibly more questionable phrases (including "Este viejo nos está jodiendo" — "This old man is fucking us over!") part from the Spanish and part from their rapid-fire speech.

On Phineas and Ferb, Dr. Doofenshmirtz tells Perry the Platypus, "You scared the scheiße out of me!"

One Nazi in Der Fuehrer's Face calls Donald Duck a "schweinehund"note incorrectly spoken as "schweinhund," the German equivalent of "son of a bitch".

Real Life

In an international-level fencing championship, one fencer made a mistake and swore in Swahili. An elderly member of the audience stood up and informed the referee that he'd done so, and the offender was penalized.

Some anatomical references sound not only more polite but sexier when spoken in French. Take, for instance, "derrière" or (to quote Christopher Buckley):

There was another phrase much in Suzy's repertoire then: "belle poitrine." As in, "Mrs. Buckley, of the belle poitrine." For years, I laughed along with it; then, one day in French class, we got to body parts, and I discovered it meant "great tits."note This isn't actually a cuss word — it just means "chest" — but the effect is the same as if you abruptly discovered you'd been complimenting someone on her "chest" without knowing it.

A football game for Euro 2000 where a young David Beckham tripped a striker from the opposing side (Greece). The striker's response as he was sitting on the grass? "Ante gamisou, re malaka" (ie. Fuck you, you wanker.) The referee did not catch it, but Greek viewers laughed their asses off. (Eventually, they lost, however)

When the Scottish note technically British, but all the team members were Scots curling team was tipped for gold medal at the winter Olympics and naturally attracted great Press interest, American TV was dismayed to point microphones at them during play only to capture lots of inventive Caledonian invective. The American TV people asked the team to tone it down a little so as not to offend American viewers. The Scots, who always talked like that and had freely done so since the days when TV crews only pointed cameras at them, saw no reason to stop now and suggested if American TV wanted to avoid offence, it should turn the fucking microphones off, do you fucking get that, Jimmy?

This actually happens a lot in the Netherlands, where people love to over-use English swear words. They aren't considered as bad as they would be in English. For example, part of "Uncle Fucka" from the movie South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut was once shown, uncensored, on the evening news during an item about bleeping out swear words on United States television.

Fairly frequent in Quebec, with fuck and shit being seen as overall quite mild (and perfectly acceptable on prime-time television), compared to Quebec's vast array of liturgy-based swearwords. The borrowed adjective fucké (broken, ruined) is a good example — it's just slang, not really offensive at all.

Conversely, European French-speaking people have a nasty habit of finding Quebec's religious-based curses terribly amusing and grossly overusing them, or just not connecting with the fact that profanity is different from what they're used to. Can lead to hilarious situations.

In Canada in general—or at least on the CBC—swearing isn't as heavily censored as in certain other places one might name. The 6 o'clock news, for example, won't bleep anything but an F-bomb. Individual networks vary on other matters.

In the 1970s, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau (a native French speaker) told a group of striking truck drivers to "mange[r] de la merde".note Translation: Eat shit.

A coffee shop chain in southeastern Massachusetts named Marylou's (known to some as "Hooters of the morning" from its baristas' usual uniform of tight T-shirts and daisy dukes) has a featured drink called the "Funky Fanabla". Demangled into standard Italian, it comes out to "va fa Napoli", which means, more or less, "go to hell", and literally something along the lines of "go do it like they do in Naples". The drink itself is some kind of iced coffee something or other.

Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanova took French lessons, and her instructor told once told her to underline any words she didn't know and ask him. Reading Les Misérables, at one point, she saw the word "merde (shit)", and since the tutor wasn't around she went to find her father and ask him. Cue awkwardness when the Tsar asked the tutor why she was learning that word.

Might be a very group-specific thing, but on some chats and forums that blot out all the common English swear words, people will use the most horrific profanities from their native language. For example, using the Finnish profanity "perkele" (basically a harsher version of "fuck") in a sentence "pretty perkeleen big" ("pretty fucking big"). This can lead to some comedy when people who don't speak the language try to use the same words, especially if the language requires inflection (because most people will use the words in the context-sensitive right form anyway.)

On CNN, when discussing President Obama's "looking for 'whose ass to kick'" statement in regards to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, Ed Henry, not wishing to say the actual word himself, substituted it with 'arse'. (This was after he'd been teased for earlier replacing it with 'butt'.) Naturally, Obama's and Henry's words were set to music as a Stupid Statement Dance Mix by Schmohoyo.

Most swear words in modern Hebrew are actually loanwords from Arabic or Russian that were a lot stronger in the original. Hence, you'll have people throwing around things like kibinimat (Russian, from k yebeni materi, which means "[go] to [your] fucked mother") and kuss ummak (Arabic, meaning "your mother's cunt", implying either that the insultee should return there or that the insulter had done something with it) a bit more freely than in the source languages.

In Ethiopia most people learn about American culture through movies and music videos. This results in small kids trying to impress foreigners by shouting out "fuck you". The "Fuck You" capital lies around Shashamane and Awassa where kids say it the most, and is incredibly funny when they instead shout out "fuck me", and then wonder why the Americans are laughing at them.

In Germany most people don't consider the English curse words to be big deal. Especially "shit" has about the same level as "Mist", which translates as crap. But Germans are generally lax about the use of swear words.

Especially when it comes to swear words that combine religion with vulgarities. "Herrgottsack!" ("By the Balls of God, the Lord and Saviour!") is pretty common and perfectly acceptable when you just accidentally hit your finger with a hammer, or did something similar.

The more common form (and where this rare, shorter former originally derives from) is "Herr Gott Sakrament" — which follows the same idea as French Canadian of using religious terms as curses. In this case its closest translation is "Sacrament (of the) Lord (and) God".

In Norway, some people love to use the word shit liberally, although as it is completely homophonous with the harmless Norwegian word "skitt" (dirt), it's hard to tell which they are using. Dirt, meanwhile, derives from the Norwegian word "drit", which today is considered vulgar. They've also got the dialectal "skit", which does mean "shit" but still isn't too vulgar for normal informal conversation.

Norwegian swear words are very context sensitive. Politicians and celebrities can sit on talk shows all day talking about how fucking well they got their shit together without anyone batting an eyelid, but the moment they call someone a fucking idiot, they can expect bunch of nasty headlines in tomorrow's papers. The issue isn't with the words themselves, but their potential as insults.

The Washington, DC DMV issued a Vanity License Plate reading "MERDE" without realizing what it meant.

419 Scam baiters use these a lot. One scammer was left standing at Amsterdam airport holding a sign reading "Kontneuker" (Dutch for "ass-fucker"), under the mistaken assumption that it was the surname of his contact.

Amusingly, the quote for this page, when exposed to an internet translator actually came up with "Damn fucking fucking fucking shit asshole motherfucker of." Brilliant.

Swedish people typically know a few Finnish curse words and sometimes use them when their own ones aren't enough — and vice versa.

An antiquated Austrian pejorative word for Italians is "Katzelmacher", which sounds oddly harmless ("Katzel" sounds like "little cat"); however, it actually arose from the Italian slang word "cazzo" (literally, "dick"), that the Italians throw around a lot.

Orthodox Jews in Israel generally adhere to the Hebrew calendar, which uses gematria in place of numbers to mark days in a month. In colloquial Hebrew, the Arabic ya, used originally as a vocative particle, is used before insults (kinda like ‘you’ in ‘You Bastard’). And, it just so happens that the letters used to write ya in Hebrew (יא) also mean ‘11’ in gematria. All this leads to this very confusing conversation between a religious soldier and his non-religious IDF commander, who thought ‘Tammuz’ (the name of a month) to be some insult he must have misunderstood:

Commander: Vaanunu, when’s the wedding?

Soldier: Tammuz 11

Commander: Who are you calling a Tammuz

Finnish people will often say "fuck", "shit" or "scheisse" when they want to swear without sounding like they're swearing.

The Japanese absolutely love the English word "fuck" (something about the way it looks is aesthetically pleasing to them), so it's often found on T-shirts and the like that are sold in stores in Japan.

A context-specific example, possibly involving Values Dissonance: Nordic Noir dramas shown on British TV, such as "The Bridge" and Borgen, are shown in the native language with English subs. The BBC often prefaces them with an advisory about bad language. This is a warning that there will be the occassional "fuck" or "shit" in the dialogue. But in the native Norwegian/Swedish/Danish, these words generally carry less charge than in English and might be represented in the subtitles with "bloody", "damn" or "bugger". The really shocking language might be "Go to Hell" and similar - which in Nordic languages carries the same charge as "Fuck you!" but which is often literally translated in the subs, thus losing its charge for English-speaking listeners whilst remaining shocking to native speakers.

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